I'm 38 years old, married with 3 wonderful daughters (ages 14,13,and 9)..... and have gained 30lbs over the past 3 years. Well, I'm truly ready to change eating and exercise habits and get rid of this unwanted weight. I am very happy in my life with the exception of this additional 30 lbs I am carrying around. I'm motivated to eat better (healthier & smaller portions) and work out but find that my very busy life (work, school, activities with the family) is my excuse for not always giving my health/fitness goals the attention and dedication they deserve. I'm looking for fitness buddies that can relate to a busy working Mom and can provide some motivational health and fitness tips, tricks, etc they have used so that I can try to fit everything that needs to be done into a 24 hour day and not sacrifice my weight loss and fitness goals because "I ran out of time".

Welcome Crystal! If you browse the different threads, you will find a lot of us are working on the same things - and some people are really inspiring in the changes they have made I especially like the "have you exercised today?" thread in the Exercise section.
In my experience so far, the energy I have gained from eating changes and exercising has offset the time required. (For me, avoiding simple carbs and making sure to get adequate protein each meal is the key - but you will find different people have found success with different food strategies.)
Sometimes we mothers think that it is "selfish" to put our health first. But it is a gift to your family as well as yourself for you to be healthier and happier. In the long run, your daughters will be happy that you modeled healthy behavior and took care of your physical well-being!
- Jaime
(mother of two daughters, ages 25 and 18, high weight 190, now 165)

Jaime,
Thank you for the advice on the various threads, I'm going to begin reading through them now I'm new to online weight loss and fitness, it can be a bit daunting trying to navigate through the website to figure out what works for me and what doesn't. Do you log all of your food and exercise or do you pick and choose which tools you use to track/monitor your progress?

Jaime,
Thank you for the advice on the various threads, I'm going to begin reading through them now I'm new to online weight loss and fitness, it can be a bit daunting trying to navigate through the website to figure out what works for me and what doesn't. Do you log all of your food and exercise or do you pick and choose which tools you use to track/monitor your progress?

-Crystal

I do log all of my food and exercise. It keeps me honest! And I weigh every day, but I don't log my weight every day - I keep track during the week, and then log the week's average, so I don't get too excited or discouraged by daily fluctuations. (You will find that different people do different things re logging weight - some people weigh just once a week and log it, others log every day.) And I record measurements once in a while when I think of it. The tool I don't use so much is the "mood" log, although I do sometimes journal. I don't know if others find the "mood" log useful.